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by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
Aug 13, 2018

On 15 July, hundreds (one report said thousands) of people from more than 100 social and political organisations participated in the “March for Life, Health and Dignity of Dominican Women”, which called for the decriminalisation of abortion in the country on three grounds: when the life of the woman is at risk, in cases of rape or incest, and when the fetus is not viable.

The march went from the Dominican Medical College to the National Congress. Placards carried messages such as: “The rich abort, the poor die”, “The sins according to a religion do not have to be crimes for the nation” and “#Abortion3Grounds: the life, health and dignity of women”. There were also demands that legislators “fulfill their role as representatives of the will of the Dominican people, who have pronounced themselves in favour of the three grounds by a large majority.”

Police in Keroka, Nyamira County detained two women over abortion-related crimes.

Keroka police boss Eliud Muchira said the two women were seized on Friday evening from a house in Nyankoba village while in the company of two high school students who were allegedly attempting to procure illegal abortion.

Argentina’s women have not been beaten on abortion – change will come
The ‘senadores percha’ who voted against legalisation have won a hollow victory but cannot stand in the way of progress

Claudia Piñeiro
Fri 10 Aug 2018

Argentina’s senators could not understand what was being debated: legal abortion or clandestine abortion? Or they did not want to understand? Thirty-eight senators voted for the absolute rejection of a bill to allow legal termination, without showing any willingness to introduce changes or improve the proposals. They simply said “no” – as if they were judges instead of legislators. They showed an arrogant attitude, absolutely detached from a reality in Argentina where there are women who die every year from complications arising after clandestine abortions.

To reject the bill, they pronounced all kind of barbarities from their seats: proclaiming that they were saving embryos, without explaining how, and even suggesting that intrafamily rape does not imply violence.

Argentina: No turning back
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9 August 2018

Argentina’s Senate voted last night – after a 15-hour “debate”, during which the room was mostly empty of Senators – to reject a bill on abortion passed by the House of Deputies in June. The tone and level of engagement in the two houses of the congress could not have been more different. The Deputies listened to each other, they were passionate, they seemed more open. The Senators were often lugubrious, it seemed they were talking to the camera or to no one. The tone was heavy, the anti-abortion speeches felt endless, repetitive of the same empty phrases. There seemed to be fewer who spoke passionately on behalf of the lives of women.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, stood in the pouring rain outside for the whole 15 hours, waiting for a different result. As the photo above shows, this time anti-abortion demonstrators were there in large numbers too, but that does not change the fact that the majority of the population of women in Argentina support law reform.

BUENOS AIRES — They narrowly lost the vote. But as supporters of a bill to legalize abortion in Argentina began to shake off a stinging defeat in the Senate on Thursday, they took consolation in having galvanized a reproductive-rights movement across Latin America and began to consider how to redirect their activism.

A coalition of young female lawmakers who stunned the political establishment by putting abortion rights at the top of the legislative agenda this year seemed to be on the verge of a historic victory with the bill. But intense lobbying by Catholic Church leaders and staunch opposition in conservative northern provinces persuaded enough senators to vote against it.

JAKARTA — Activists have welcomed the release of a 15-year-old girl from jail on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on “humanitarian grounds” following her arrest for a home abortion after being repeatedly raped by her older brother.

They worry, however, that proposed changes to the nation’s criminal code will reinforce the criminalization of abortion, target sexual minorities and even outlaw disseminating information about contraception.

New Delhi: Abortion was legalised in India almost half a century ago, yet unsafe abortions – performed in unhygienic conditions by untrained providers – are the third largest cause of maternal death. Nearly 78% of the more than 15 million abortions conducted annually in India are outside of health facilities, giving rise to safety concerns. There is only one licensed provider for 224,000 women in rural areas.

India allows medical termination of a pregnancy of up to 20 weeks’ gestation to be conducted by a registered medical practitioner. There have been attempts to amend the act to expand the provider base to include nurses and non-allopathic medicine practitioners, and extend the deadline to 24 weeks from the current 20.

Argentina’s abortion debate mirrors Ireland in every respect bar one
Unable to travel from Argentina for an abortion, 3,000 women have died since 1983

Aug 7, 2018
Mariela Belski

A very welcome Bill will soon come before the Oireachtas in Ireland, effecting a transformation of Ireland’s provision of abortion services. A very important Bill is also before the Argentinian senate right now, proposing to decriminalise abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and thereby guarantee access to safe abortion services. We in Amnesty International Argentina are calling for the senate to vote for its adoption.

There are many similarities between our two countries in the context of abortion. Therefore, we are heartened that a group of 60 Irish parliamentarians from both Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann, across almost all political parties and groups, have signed a letter to the Argentinian senators urging a vote in favour of the Bill.

Prospects faded over the weekend for a bill that would legalise abortion in Argentina, when an opposition senator said she had changed her mind and would vote against the measure when it is brought to the floor on Wednesday. The proposal, which would expand abortion rights beyond current laws that allow the procedure only in cases of rape or when the mother’s health is at risk, passed the lower house last month by 129 votes to 125.

Since then religious activists, particularly in rural parts of the country, have pushed back against the measure, which is backed by feminists and rights groups galvanised in recent years by efforts to stop violence against women. The bill would make Argentina the third country in Latin American to broadly legalise abortion, after Uruguay and Cuba.